Quite simply: #save6music

As many will know, I am a radio person. I present an online radio show, I’ve produced/worked at lots of different radio stations, some commercial, some community, some online and some BBC. I’ve been lucky enough to work at 6music with my friend Hermeet who produces Craig Charles’ Funk and Soul show, on said show. In fact I’m awake early because I should be going up Manchester to work on it this evening.

The reason I love radio so much is because I used to listen to GLR and XFM as a old child / early teen, and loved the music on XFM and the speech on GLR. When GLR turned into BBC London the quality went down hill (Vanessa Feltz?!) and as soon as Capital Radio Group took over XFM their good music got dumped, and ever since I’ve been stuck listening to Radio 1.

“Being stuck listening to Radio 1″ isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I started listening to Radio 1 when Sara Cox had just taken over breakfast, Jo Whiley was on the brunch show, the amazingly funny Mark and Lard were on 1-3pm live from Manchester, and then Chris Moyles took over at 3pm for the afternoon drive show. Moyles was hilarious, having free reign to throw beer cans at producers and be cheekier than he is at the moment. Jo Whiley was entertaining, she wasn’t constantly talking about having babies or married life, she was introducing us to so called amazing bands like Coldplay. Mark and Lard were comedy genius, northern monkeys through and though their regular, repetitive features and in-jokes really cheered me up whilst bunking off school.

Now a days Moyles has to be quite restrained with what he does, Fearne Cotton talks about herself for three hours *yawn*, Greg James is a mini-Scott Mills, Scott Mills is a slightly funny camp Moyles wanna be.

The one redeeming feature about Radio 1 is there evening schedule. It always has been and always will be. Zane Lowe playing the XFM/MTV style indie music that’s new and on the blogs, Hue Stephens playing the new music from BBC Introducing and Grimshaw to an extent. Evenings were better when Colin Murray was around though, but thats another story for another time! These 5 hours an evening are amazing content, but because it’s on the station that’s targeted to the mainstream young people of the UK, the specialist shows still have to be mainstream to an extent.

The solution to this time problem, trying to make the mainstream happy whilst also trying to enlighten the lives of the ‘individual’ amongst the masses was to create a new station. With the launch of DAB, and the BBC backing (what I think was) a dead horse, they needed to show their commitment. Two birds and one stone later, the birth of 1xtra, 6music and Asian Network were born. All niche stations with a target market. 1xtra, the ‘black music’ station catered too, well, you know. Same with Asian Network. Then 6music was for those people that wanted to listen to a version of XFM that had really good music, respectable presenters, and BBC production values.

Needless to say, ever since I encountered 6music I’ve loved it.

With the news that the BBC are quite possibly going to sack it off as a wasted expense, and even worse, sell it to Absolute Radio, All I can as is that you sign the petition, Join the Facebook Group, add the twibbon, use the hash tag on twitter, and Save BBC 6 Music.